A few days ago David Cameron used Shakespeare to deride Jeremy Corbyn’s disastrous reshuffle of the UK Labour shadow Cabinet. It was “much ado about nothing”, he quipped in the House of Commons.
It is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and his great legacy is being commemorated. Cameron reminded us that Shakespeare’s plots, speeches and characters continue to inspire culture and society. His influence is present everywhere and his works have been translated into over 100 languages, including Maltese.
Celebrating the new year in Malta, we could draw on a famous quote from As You Like It. “All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare somewhat cynically, and we are all just actors playing out our given roles.
In Shakespeare’s time, the ‘Theatrum mundi’ metaphor was often used to reflect on the human condition. More fitting to this season, ushering in 2016, may be ‘Theatrum kcini’ – every kitchen is a stage.
Before the last general election, then prime minister Lawrence Gonzi had encouraged his troops to enter people’s kitchens and feel the pulse of voters.
Not to be upstaged, Joseph Muscat had hit back, in his inimitable style, with a billboard depicting Gonzi in a kitchen frying an omelette (froġa), with a note on the fridge about the BWSC power station and an electricity bill in his apron pocket.
Franco Debono, then a PN backbencher, had called Gonzi’s plan ‘Operation Kitchens’ and seized the opportunity to call for more heads to roll. Charles Mangion, then shadow minister for the economy, warned that people should not trust Gonzi in their kitchens, as he would “take the meat and leave them with the bone”.
Our news has been sidetracked for an entire week by the kitchen in Luqa which Joseph Muscat selected as the venue for his New Year message to the nation. I do not need to repeat the details of the staged, artificial conversation that was broadcast and widely shared on social media.
Surely everyone who watched the Prime Minister’s video now knows that it is not true that this young Luqa couple benefited from the first homeowners tax rebate in 2014. The house was purchased in 2008.
It was also revealed that the young man’s family owns a successful furniture company that makes kitchens. The Luqa kitchen is their latest model which is not even available on the market yet.
That the government tried to stage this sham in the first place is astounding
This was not a struggling young couple who managed to buy an expensive kitchen thanks to electricity savings and a tax rebate introduced by the Labour government, as was falsely implied in the highly partisan New Year video.
This is Malta, and everyone knows everyone. The idea that the government tried to stage this sham in the first place is astounding. Facebook and the online newspapers were flooded with disparaging comments about the Prime Minister’s participation in this trickery.
Aren’t the disturbing events in Libya, Paris or Syria more important than a chat in a kitchen, I hear you say. Well, yes of course they are far more momentous and complicated, but watching the Prime Minister peddling falsehoods on television is pretty significant and upsetting in its own way too.
What is this craze for kitchens anyway? A bit further afield, David Cameron and Ed Miliband had invited the press into their home kitchens during their election campaigns. They wore casual clothes and held mugs of coffee. The aim was to project an informal image, the human, personal side of the leader.
When Gonzi wanted to visit kitchens, this suggested being invited into the intimate spaces of a family, where people could relax and speak freely about their concerns in an informal environment.
Not so with Muscat’s choreographed kitchen scenario. No comfortable chairs or warm mugs were present. A set of sharp, steel carving knives was one of the few items on display on the shiny counter.
This was a formal, uptight space, with the Prime Minister wearing a suit and tie. Coffee was sipped standing up, from white cups and saucers in a spotless kitchen that looked more like a showroom than a personal space.
And there we have hit upon the nerve of the problem. A specially-crafted showroom, only revealing a few chosen items, is not what people want from politics. Transparency demands the true facts, being faithful to reality and letting people know what is really going on in those back rooms in government ministries.
People do not want to hear limited, showroom-style phrases about the sale of passports, Żonqor, hospitals, the power station, or the public bus service.
They have demanded the details, and want to see the full contracts. Show us a genuine kitchen. We do not want vague fluff about land reclamation or new local plans, but to understand the government’s real direction.
The staged new year kitchen conversation was a small event, but it is not a trivial matter. It is especially worrying as a reflection of a bigger picture. See a world in a grain of sand, said the Romantic poet William Blake, referring to the beauty of nature. See a world view in a single kitchen, is more to the point here.
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